Sellernomics Podcast

Transcript

• [0:00:10]

  Welcome to the Sellernomics podcast. In today's episode, we'll be featuring one of the many great tools and software available to Amazon sellers to help you grow your FBA business. A special thank you to our sponsor, Gatita, the global leader in FBA auditing and reimbursements. Get $400 in free FBA reimbursement. Now it's time to show us what you got with your host, Lisa Kinsky.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:00:40]

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of Seller nomics. Show us what you've got. I have with me here today Ian Kaneshiro with Sellersnap calling in all the way from Tel Aviv. So, Ian, thank you so much for joining me later in the day.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:00:55]

  Hey, Lisa, thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be here and I'm just really excited know talk to you guys all about Sellersnap.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:01:04]

  Yes, very excited to have you on. I think we've had to reschedule this a couple times because of holidays and travel schedules. So this one's been a long time coming and I appreciate your flexibility. But happy to finally have you here. So let's talk about first, let's just dive into a little bit about Sellersnap, what you guys do. The topic of today is kind of like AI business repricing. Of course we're going to do a demo, but I think it's good to have some background on what your business does first.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:01:28]

  Yeah, absolutely. So Sellersnap is essentially an AI Amazon repricer. And what that means is that we focus on providing our repricing service to resellers on the Amazon marketplace. And what we aim to do is we aim to get the buy box at the highest possible price. And so the way that we aim to get the buy box at the highest possible price is by avoiding price wars. And so we take a cooperative approach in order to understand, by understanding the decisions that our competitors make based off of the decisions that we make.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:02:04]

  And so as we've connected with Amazon through their old MWS system and their more newer SPI, we take in all these different factors in terms of competitors and pricing, and we try to make really intelligent decisions. And I can give a really short, typically, you know, what we see on an Amazon listing is that, let's say that there's two competitors, you and I. Oftentimes we'll see that a competitor is using kind of a rule based method, a really aggressive approach that's undercutting a competitor by a penny.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:02:45]

  So what ends up happening is that competitor, a undercuts competitor B, who undercuts competitor a. And this just keeps going back and forth until we eventually kind of bottom out the price, really cutting into our profit margins and our bottom line. And so where Sellersap comes into play is that we see that this is happening and we will make sure that we will move that price up knowing that that competitor is going to come with us, right, because they're using a rule undercut by a penny.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:03:18]

  And so what happens is we'll move up in price, that competitor will move up with us, and then we'll reengage, we'll reengage letting them undercut us, we'll undercut them until the repricer thinks that the price got too low, at which point it'll move back up, kind of restarting that cycle. So the result in both scenarios is that we're getting about 50% of the buy box share, because we're getting percentages every time we exchange.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:03:44]

  But with Sellersamp, we're getting that same buy box share at the highest possible price. And so that's really where one of those scenarios where Sellersamp really shines, where we can really focus again on that profit and profit margin for our clients.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:04:00]

  Incredible. So let's jump straight into the solution then and see this thing kind of in action.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:04:05]

  Yeah, definitely. I think that the demos are a really interesting way to get into a new platform in terms of sellersnap and repricing in general. It's rather difficult to see how the repricer works. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be going over kind of another thing that Sellersamp provides in terms of the analytics and some of the customizations that that provides. And so anyone who is watching this or listening to this podcast can know is that we do offer a free 15 day trial, which we'll talk about towards the end of this talk.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:04:44]

  But essentially what we're doing is when you log into Sellersnap, you log into this overview page. The overview page is just that, it's a zoomed out view of everything from your ordered items, total revenue and profit, and how many items you have in repricing in specific date ranges. So we chose to go with the last seven to 30 days, but the majority of our work is done on the listings page. And so on the listings page we have those aggregated analytics up here in the top. So once you put in your cost values as well, you'll be able to see not only your revenue and your ordered items, but things such as profit, profit, margin, et cetera.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:05:30]

  Scrolling down, we have our listings table, and our listings table has over 70 different columns that sellers can sort and filter on in order to answer those important questions about their store. So some of the filters that sellers might use, they might come in and say, show me everything that's being repriced and in stock, something that's really kind of a standard use case on a day to day basis.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:05:59]

  But even from there, then I might be able to dive into anywhere that I have where my buy box share is under 50% in the last 24 hours. And I can drive into a bunch of different customizable filters and nest them things including buy box share, competitive price threshold, days in stock, and the list really goes on and on. So this is quite the robust system to, again, answer really important questions about your store.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:06:32]

  And so instead of going into the filters too much, there's really four things that I really want to talk about. We, I know you and I have spoken in the past at some of the previous conventions in Vegas and whatnot. Have we ever spoken about the RPR or the reduced price range? Excuse me?

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:07:00]

  No, I don't think so.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:07:02]

  All right, so this one's really exciting thing. So the RPR, what we call the RPR or the reduced price range, refers directly to Amazon referral fees. And so you know how in specific categories you have what we call step in referral fees. So if you hit $10 up to $10, it's an 8% fee. Let's say after $10 it's 15%. So what that means is that we are actually making less money if we sell at 10.1 cent than if we sold at $10 on the dot.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:07:40]

  And so because of that step in the referral fee, we at Sellersnap have designed the repricer to avoid this. So, for example, this dove candy product is, I believe, a grocery item. You might see here that we've identified the reduced profit range at $10.01 to ten point $83. And because my min and max price fall around that range, it gives the price an opportunity to go into that range if my competitor does.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:08:13]

  But what Sellersap does, it says I'm going to avoid that because there's no use that me selling at $10.50 because if I do, I'll take home less money than being on the other side of the range. So it's just one more factor that we take into account with our repricing method. A couple of other things that we do in terms of repricing, we've really tried to integrate a lot of these, how could I say it? These different pain points that customers have had in terms of how you deal with one, your inventory and fees into sometimes your suppliers as well. So the first thing is with small and light, we were able to integrate small and light into our system as well. We pull that information directly from Amazon, we can see which items are currently enrolled and how those fees affect small and light and how that might affect our min and max price.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:09:15]

  Because if an item is enrolled in small and light, and I want x markup or x margin on my costs for my min, that will change based on my referral fee. So it's just another tool that allows sellers to really dig in and try to make sure that you're most profitable at the different points that you're currently using. Other things that we have involve map pricing and the ability to look at replenishment returns data in our premium features as well.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:10:01]

  The other two really great things about Sellersnap are the customizability. And so one of the things about the AI Repricer is that when it aims to get the buy box at the highest possible price, sometimes it does a really great job at it. But the negative side of that is that occasionally you are in a scenario where that price is too high for the consumer, right? And so what ends up happening is that we might be getting the line share of the buy box at the highest possible price, but our sales velocity drops, or an item is I overordered on an item and it's sitting in Amazon's FBA for too long or a whole slew of reasons. And so just for that, you might find yourself scenario where you need to deviate from the current the AI strategy.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:10:59]

  And so we have incorporated a way to make repricing presets where you can nest conditions. And what that means is that every time I nest a condition, the repricer will, before it goes to the AI repricer or whatever my default repricing method.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:11:16]

  Is.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:11:19]

  It will check each condition. So it checks this number two slot first. If the condition passes, then it will move to the application here, which could be win buy box or follow competitor or set to min, for example. If that doesn't pass, it'll move to the next condition. And if none of these conditions pass, it'll move back up to the default repricing method. So oftentimes we might see something to the extent of if I don't have a purchase in the last 12 hours, set to win buy box, which is a more aggressive strategy and say I want to target 60% of the buy box if I don't have a sale.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:12:05]

  And then what we'll also see is inventory based conditions as well. That says if I have inventory age as above 90 days and there's more than zero items, so there's one or more items in that, then I also want to win buy box or even set to min to just liquidate those items. And so these are some of the tools that we can use in sellersnap in order to really align the repricer with the business objectives of each and every Amazon seller, because each and every Amazon seller runs very different.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:12:47]

  Love this. I love this conditional biding of this. That's really smart.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:12:53]

  Yeah. And it's just a way that we want to give some power back to the users in order to, again, take control of your business. The last thing that I'm going to speak about of things that Sellerstap currently has, and especially during customizability, is our custom columns. And so what we did was even though we have 70 or 80 columns that are available to our customers, we found that customers were always requesting more columns. That again, didn't necessarily align with the general repricing use case, but was very niche, very specific to each one of those client specific needs.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:13:45]

  So what we did was we came up with the ability to add custom columns so where customers can come in, create a column name, call it whatever they want, and use it for very specific purposes. Right. And so one of the things that we see oftentimes is we have a column name that's called source. We'll see wholesaler one and wholesaler two. Right? And then you can go in and filter and say, okay, when I have an item, I want to see all my items who are from wholesaler two using a specific repricing strategy with inventory age at this, how am I doing and what do I need to do in order to move more items, generate more revenue, maybe generate more profit, and then we can be really strategic in how we use sellersnap and our pricing technology in order to again drive our business objectives. And so sometimes customizability aligned with granularity and automation is just really the name of the game. You kind of need that holy trinity there.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:14:58]

  Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I love.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:15:04]

  So in terms of everything that Sellersnap has to offer, we've put years and years into the development of our repricer and the analytics behind it as well. And over that time, we have seen the Amazon space evolve a ton. And one of the things is one of the things that we see often, or one of the things we've been seeing more and more has to do with Amazon business. And so for anyone who's listening to this and doesn't necessarily know what Amazon business is, the best way to think about it is kind of as its own marketplace, right?

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:15:52]

  So any business, large or small, and we see e commerce businesses using it, like I'm sure customers of Sellersnap and Gatita and everyone in this space, but um, schools, hospitals, supply chain companies, everybody in between are using these things to get items for their business. And oftentimes we see it being chips for the break room, or paper towels, cleaning supplies, things like that. That's generally where we see it. But all the categories are open. Any Amazon seller can do it. So basically what Amazon has done is it has given sellers an opportunity to provide extra discounts to people, to companies that are trying to buy in bulk.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:16:45]

  So you might say, if I'm selling soap like you mentioned, I might be selling it to b, to c, directly to a consumer for $5 a bottle. I don't know, $5 a liter. I don't buy much soap these days, but maybe as a company it would be better for me. I could also provide a bigger discount, especially if I'm selling FBM and I can get deals with ups and DHL and all that, I can sell it at a discount in bulk, move more product, make more profit, and also the customer gets a discount and gets extra value out of that. And so Amazon has done, I think, a really great job at opening up this marketplace. And really they've been pushing it for about the past year or so with really trying to pull sellers into this program to provide for their business customers, but also pulling service providers like ourselves into it as well, to provide more solutions for their sellers so they can sell more products to customers.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:17:56]

  And so historically, what that looked like is that you would go into your seller central and we also had it in our repricer, and you'd go in and you would set your business pricing that looks something like this. You set an amount or percentage and you send a discount type, you would set a business discount. So maybe even if I want to give a discount of 5% for one item, I could, and then I could set a variety of bounds.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:18:37]

  A bound might be another percentage point or two if they buy two items, and then I could keep nesting those. And so it was a really manual process, but it's a really valuable thing because there is a buy box for Amazon business. And so what has made this so successful is for people that are companies that are in early selling Amazon business is that now you're winning the buy box, oftentimes you're dominating because there's less competition there, because not as many companies are getting on board, but as more and more companies were getting on board, what would happen is that all these discounts are connected to my b to C price.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:19:28]

  That was the problem. So not only do I have to compete on my b to C price, I could be winning my b to C price 100% buy box. But then one of my competitors is selling on Amazon business as well as me. But they're offering a better business discount or they're offering better deals at higher quantities. Right. And so I would have no way of knowing that. And even if I did, it was really difficult for me to track and update those quantities. So it's really a shot in the dark.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:20:06]

  So about a year ago, maybe 18 months, Amazon had approached Sellersnap about this specific problem, trying to understand what a repricer needed in order to really reprice business product X in a smart way. And so over the past year, Sellersap has been working specifically on our new AI business repricing. Because we've always had the manual business repricing. But again, the manual part isn't what we do. The AI technology is where we stand.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:20:50]

  And so what we've done is we've been able to work with Amazon's SP API to bring in the AI business repricing strategy. And so what that means is instead of setting up these messy, complicated tiers and you have to doing it on each individual listing, which was really tough, we made it. So you only had to pick up one of three strategies. The first one is the default compete for all tiers. So I'll look at every tier and try to compete there. The second one is only compete for the five lowest tiers, and the third one is only compete for the business buy box itself.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:21:28]

  And so what we've done is that we have been able to provide our customers, and right now this is in beta and we have about 40 or 50 customers in beta who are currently using this product. We have been able to provide these beta users the world's first repricer using AI technology. On Amazon's business platform, the very first customer that turned this on saw a 40% increase in revenue.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:22:04]

  Wow.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:22:04]

  Right after turning it on. I'm not saying that it's typical. All kinds of sellers operate really differently, especially when you're moving volume. I think it really depends but it just shows that there is a lot of opportunity here, especially if you're first to market. And it doesn't mean that this is going to be forever, because as we see with Amazon over the years, there's always something new and you got to jump on a bandwagon, hopefully early. You catch a peak, everybody else comes to eat, and then you're kind of on the same page as everybody else. But for the time being, getting in front of this AI business repricing, we think is going to be a big talk this year.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:22:56]

  Our beta program has been really successful and we're really looking forward to rolling it out to the rest of our users in the next few weeks, assuming that all of our development really stays on track. And that's really our goal.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:23:11]

  And fingers crossed that it does, because I know that it, things come up suddenly and frequently, unfortunately. So fingers crossed. But this episode should go live shortly after we air. So like you said, in the next couple of weeks, you guys will be able to roll this out to more users. Anything else on the demo before we kind of get into where folks can get a hold of you? What an ideal client looks like, who is best fit to use your service?

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:23:36]

  No, I think that I already spoke a lot today. I'll save everyone the hassle, but if anyone has questions, I'm always available. But yeah, I think that's it for now.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:23:51]

  For the amazing if a seller is interested in using your tool, you guys definitely have a great tool there. And the AI repricing is so exciting. What would the ideal customer to work with Sellersnap look like?

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:24:06]

  It's a really great question. So in terms of the ideal customer for Sellersnap, there are a few different criteria. The first one, our customers are generally resellers. And so the majority of our customer base either have wholesale connections or they're doing kind of the Oara online arbitrage, retail arbitrage game, buying low and selling high. Right. Although we do have some products that go with private label, the majority of our focus is on the Amazon reselling businesses.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:24:56]

  So that's number one. The second thing is it revolves around being at a point where your business needs automation. There are some sellers, I speak to all kinds of sellers every single day of the week, and some sellers will watch this podcast, watch this video, and who are just trying to kick, you know, I think that for those sellers, there's a lot to learn in the early stages. And yes, repricing is an essential part and you should use a repricer.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:25:35]

  But we found that the most successful customers are the ones who have a little bit more grip on their Amazon business and are ready to scale and want to use really powerful automations in order to be able to focus on the things that they're actually good at and let the robots and the computers do the rest.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:25:59]

  Sure, making that shift from working in the business to working on the business, freeing up your absolutely incredible, incredible. So where can folks learn more about you guys and reach out to you if they have any questions about anything that you shared today or just about Sellersnap in general, or maybe if they need some advice?

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:26:18]

  Perfect question. So there are two places that you can learn the most about Sellersnap. Number one is YouTube. Our YouTube channel is packed with information. Also, we often talk to a lot of companies and Amazon gurus and influencers and stuff like that. So there's a lot of information there on Sellersnap. Also, you can check out our website at sellersnap IO, which you can see in the little bar below.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:26:52]

  And if you need a direct line to someone from our team, sales at Sellersnap IO is a perfect place to go. It gets pushed to our main mailbox where one of our repricing specialists will be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:27:08]

  Incredible. And then we kind of just lightly tapped on meeting at events and stuff before. Can we expect to see the Sellersnap team at anything coming up in the future? Any events, any meetups?

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:27:24]

  February and March are such sprints in terms of, I think the next one that we have on the docket is the proven conference, which is in Ohio in then, but oftentimes, and you probably know it much better than me, events end up being very last minute and kind of drop everything and go. So it's not unlike us to kind of pop up and run into each other at different places.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:27:57]

  Hit something last minute. Exactly. Well, Ian, thank you so much for your time today and sharing with us your very impressive tool and the improvements come to it for everybody soon. Fingers crossed everything goes well with development. So thank you so much for your time.

• Ian Kaneshiro

  [0:28:11]

  Thanks, Lisa. Thank you.

• Lisa Kinsky

  [0:28:13]

  And thank you everybody who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, give us a share. Subscribe, stay tuned for some other great demos from service providers in the Amazon space and we will see you on the next one.